A New Evidence Suggests That the Bloodline of Neanderthals and Denisovans Still Exists Within Us.
A research team from Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has identified a unique physiological marker that could indicate whether you have an ancestor from a different species, according to Science Alert.
Neanderthals – (Photo: ANCIENT ORIGINS).
Neanderthals and Denisovans were sibling species that belong to the genus Homo, alongside Homo sapiens (modern humans).
They went extinct over 30,000 years ago. However, increasing evidence shows that their bloodline has infiltrated the Homo sapiens community through interbreeding. The number of these “hybrid descendants” is actually quite substantial.
Published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, the authors highlight an unprecedented “marker”: The Habit of Rising Early.
According to Ancient Origins, the authors identified a set of 246 genes related to the biological clock, then filtered out dozens of genes associated with this biological clock regulation that were introduced into the Homo sapiens community through interbreeding.
This occurred in Europe and Asia, where many of our ancestral communities lived closely with other species, sometimes mixing with each other.
Comparing with a dataset of hundreds of thousands of modern individuals from the UK Biobank, the invading genes from other species became even more pronounced. Notably, these foreign variants consistently increased the tendency to rise early.
According to Dr. Tony Capra from UCSF, these variants once helped Neanderthal and Denisovan communities make the most of the brief daylight hours during winter.
Thus, these genes often provide the greatest benefits to modern humans living at high latitudes today.
Additionally, this new discovery adds another piece to the puzzle of the legacy that other species have left in the world of modern humanity. Before these variants, many other genetic factors related to diseases had been explored, providing valuable data for medicine.
According to large-scale genetic studies, individuals of European and Asian descent today have about 2% of their genes inherited from Neanderthal ancestors, while Denisovan genes are more common among populations in Pacific island nations.
For instance, the people of Papua New Guinea have up to 5% of their genes inherited from Denisovan ancestors.
